


Festering Wound

by ikuzonos



Category: Exit/Corners (Visual Novel)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24260332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikuzonos/pseuds/ikuzonos
Summary: Beth tends to her garden.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Festering Wound

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Chapter 13/Beth's backstory.

They sit in the garden. Sunlight shines through the cracks in the canopy, dappling the soil below. This spring has been filled with rain and cold winds, but today is one of those rare, warm mornings. Once her bones are ready to face the day, she’ll start tending to the overgrown flower beds.

Her son is distracted by something. It could be the birds, could be his job, could be whatever philosophical text he’s decided to devote himself to today. It could be the garden. She doesn’t ask, but puts her hand on his shoulder. This is routine. He makes a small noise of appreciation.

“Earl?” she prompts gently. He doesn’t look at her. His eyes are locked on the vegetable garden, and the sprouting tomatoes. “I’m going to get to work. Will you be joining me?”

Earl stays quiet. Something is bothering him. She slowly gets out of her rickety lawn chair and stands in front of him. Eventually, he feels forced to look up into her eyes. “I’ll need a minute. Go on without me.”

“Are you feeling under the weather?” she asks. He was a sickly child; always coming down with the newest malady. Doctors told her that he might not live to be a teenager, but Earl had excellently proven them wrong; surviving long enough to be a father.

“I’m fine, Beth,” he says pointedly.

She tuts. “Is that any way to speak to your mother?”

He laughs, but something about it sounds wrong. Like the canned noise on television. It makes her chest constrict. Perhaps the vines growing up the trellis have finally started to grow around her heart as well. She descends down the porch and into the garden, continuing to realize over and over again that she’s holding her breath for no real reason.

The garden will not care for itself, but she can no longer remember the right way to do so. Even as she plucks the weeds and fertilizes the soil, she cannot help but feel that she is somehow doing it all wrong. Are the rocks arranged the right way? Are the perennials getting enough sunlight? Has she watered the herbs? Trimmed the hedges?

It’s impossible to tell. The details blur together in her head. Were the sunflowers on this side of the yard yesterday?

Beth wipes sweat off her forehead, and looks back at the porch. Earl is still sitting still, staring at the vegetables. His eyes are dull and his expression is dreary. Ignoring the trepidation coiling around her lungs, she walks back up to him and rests her hand on his shoulder again.

“This won’t fix anything,” Earl says. His voice is flat and cold. It doesn’t sound like her son, not the boy she lovingly raised for thirty-two and a half years. He looks younger than that now, like he’s barely twenty-one. Something about him is surrounded by mist.

“I’m trying,” Beth says, gripping his shoulder tighter. “That’s more than I can say for you right now. You won’t even get up.”

Earl says, “You should have rescued them. You failed all of them. Failed me. Why were  _ you _ the one who made it out?”

She pulls her hand away from him as the skin on her palms burns. He’s radiating heat like a brick oven.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” he spits at her.

And before she can find any kind of response, the garden swallows her whole.

* * *

Beth wakes with a start, shooting straight up in bed despite the ache in her back. She stares at the darkness of her bedroom and slowly breathes in and out, trying to regain awareness. It’s raining outside.

Her son is dead and she is alone in her house. No husband, no children, no grandchildren. There is nothing and nobody but herself.

Slowly, she gets out of bed and traipses down the stairs towards the backyard. On the way, she pulls on her old, rugged boots. She pulls open the door, and stares out into the dreary, dismal nighttime. Rain beats down on her head and soaks her through to the bone.

The garden fell into ruin a long time ago. She could no longer bring herself to face it or any of her failures. 

Beth walks out into the garden, her fingers grazing what remains of decades of effort. Even in the darkness, she knows her way around. Perhaps she can no longer memorize the property, but she remembers enough to avoid bumping into the dilapidated scarecrow.

What she wants is buried at the base of the tree. She kneels down, and her fingers tear through the mud until she finds the wooden box. It’s still sealed tight, still has all her worst memories locked away inside it. She throws it back in the hole and covers it again. She wants nothing to do with the box, with the life insurance money that stains her every breath.

The rain doesn’t hit quite as hard from her spot under the canopy, and Beth doesn’t move until dawn.


End file.
